Starless
by skyfare
Summary: If only you could watch me fall. COMPLETE.
1. Waiting

**A/N. T for language. Hints of BA. I don't own the characters, Law and Order, or the song (which really is a fantastic song, by the way, so dark and creepy and energetic). I'm also not entirely sure I got all the words to the song right, because it's kind of hard to understand what they're saying at parts. And I cut some of the repeated choruses from the lyrics below. All reviews are appreciated, and I would love some constructive criticism--what could I be doing better, writing wise? Thanks for reading!**

_If only you could watch me fall  
I cannot feel it anymore  
The s__oul you cut, the soul you adored  
Cannot feel you anymore  
Cause you've run through me with this fucked up force  
I think somehow I gotta get it straight  
I gotta get you out of me  
But I cannot get through you_

_See me I'm down and I get deeper with every breath  
See me I'm over the edge, farther with every step  
See me I'm down and I get deeper with every breath  
Standing over the edge - I'm taking my last breath_

_I can transcend you and mentally bend you  
But I can't handle the shit that I'm into  
I have been blinded, I'm always reminded  
Of the things I've wanted but I never could find  
I am a part of a world that I hate  
I wish the end would come faster, my world's a disaster  
Can't you see that I'm down and I'm drowning  
And I can't keep my head above my wake_

_I gotta get you out of my veins  
I gotta get you out of my blood  
I gotta get you out of my scene  
I gotta get you out of me_

_But I've really tried hard to get down to words  
It's the way I fit into this world  
Things I've survived  
Pushed me to the darker side  
Because of life as it was  
The life that was yours should've been mine  
But I never could take anymore of this  
'Cause I'm always gonna get, gonna get down to the floor  
It's a cold gun that I kiss  
'Cause I cannot break anymore_

_Somehow I feel like I'm starless  
I'm ready to fade now  
That's how I feel when I'm starless  
I'm hopeless and grayed out  
Somehow I feel like I'm starless  
I'm ready to burn out  
Now I'm starless_

**"Starless"**

**Crossfade**

***

He runs into Ross one cloudy, starless evening. He's just walking along, keeping his head down, his ears closed to the noise of the city, and he suddenly feels this short _presence _in front of him.

"Goren." Ross' voice sounds cautious, guarded. "How've you been?"

He gives a short jerky nod. "Fine—I'm fine. You?"

This is so wrong. This _stab _of a Ross-shaped reminder of what he is missing—what he is _banned _from.

"I've been well. Eames…misses you, I think. She's…you should call her."

You don't get to give me advice now that you're no longer my captain.

"I've been meaning to. I just—you know."

"Not really." Ross studies him unabashedly, standing still in obvious contrast to his increased fidgeting and twitching, every molecular imprint of every cell screaming _Run get away you were fine before _he _came along come on move it get back to life as it is now._

But of course Ross has to extend the conversation. "So what have you been up to lately?"

What has he been up to lately?

He reads a lot, now, late at night with the window open above his bed and the soft sweet wind dancing the curtains over his head. He gets lost in fantasy worlds, for once not reading something for the literary merit or to learn, but to escape. Pure stories. The Secret Garden. Sherlock Holmes. The Mists of Avalon. Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera.

He feels silly, sometimes, spending entire afternoons at the bookstore sifting through stacks of fiction and eavesdropping on other people's conversations; spending way too much money on the Wrinkle In Time series and Emily of New Moon and Roald Dahl books. Nothing terribly adult. Nothing angsty. Nothing without a happy ending.

He told his therapist, when she asked the same question as Ross (who's still standing, eyebrows raised, waiting for an answer—huh), that he's reading, but he didn't tell her what. He doesn't want to hear that he's "making an effort to recapture his childhood" or "trying to simplify things back to what they were in childhood" because _his_ childhood ended when his mother developed schizophrenia and he had to grow up and take care of her. He didn't have a lot of time to read these books then, so he's making up for lost time now, he tells himself, now that his mother is dead and he is ostensibly free from her cracking grip on his time and money and emotions.

(he really should answer Ross)

He bought a new notebook the other day. Seventeen bucks for 200 pages and he didn't care, because it is college ruled, perfectly sized, three sections, and it has multiple pockets for stuffing and detachable index cards to rip off and a good thick spiral binding that won't bend and a sturdy covered sheath of a plastic front that won't tear.

He jots random observations in it. Words he particularly likes. Names for the children he's never going to have. Ideas for how he can go about finding Donny. He writes out his memories, good and bad, of his mother, of his brother and his family and the Army and yes, of being a detective, even though it seems almost cruel to revisit those times now during his suspension. He writes out character studies of people. He tried to write one of Eames, but he couldn't, and so he ripped out that page and held it outside his window, four in the morning, and he let it drift down into the street, watching it sink and refusing to consider that a metaphor for his relationship with Eames. He _does _write a list of what he misses most about her, because then he can think about her in bits, almost—it's easier that way, if he just considers the slide of her bangs across her face and the way she bites Skittles in half and the way her fingers almost seem disjointed when she plays with her hands and waves them around as she talks; these separate parts of her that aren't really what he misses most about her because what he _really_ misses most of all about her is just _her_, and he's never never ever going to be able to get _that _down to words.

"Goren?"

He goes to the park. He took his notebook once and spent forty-five minutes trying to describe the way the spidery end branches of the trees fire up into the sky, but he couldn't find the words and he ended up frustrated and so he left.

"Detective—are you all right?"

He does the elliptical in the back of the gym. Watches everyone pound their bodies into shape on treadmills and stairmasters. He notices for the first time how pathetic the exercise bikes and rowing machines are; pale plastic stationary excuses for the real things, but the real things aren't locked away in membership-only air-conditioned anti-bacterialized rooms equipped with televisions and snack machines and white fluffy towels; the real things aren't comfortable, and who seeks out self-inflicted pain?

What else.

"Robert—are you ill?"

He walks for hours, his head bent, his hands in his pockets, hating the sidewalks and the traffic and the lights of the fucking city for the first time in his life, because outside in the chaos of other people's lives he is achingly, screamingly claustrophobic. Inside, he's fine, as long as he has the windows open to let in the air that makes him claustrophobic outside (one thing he _doesn't _do is try to figure out all the contradictions of his life anymore, because what's the point when they're not going to change anyway).

"Why don't you come with me and I'll take you to a doctor, Bobby, okay?"

He lies in bed in the early dawns, still awake in a holdover from the previous day. Awake. Alone. Awake. Spending so much time dwelling on the past and worrying about the future that he's afraid he's beginning to forget the present.

"Bobby, please."

He cut his hand, once. Just once. Just to feel it. His body was going on so normal and unaffected that he just needed to feel that quick hot slice of pain, the sudden molten rip of skin against sharp bladed metal, _something_. He watched it bleed for a while, feeling detached, as if the blood were something unnoticed and ordinary—paper clips, refrigerator magnets, flyers stuffed into doors—and then he cleaned himself up and bandaged it and it's nearly healed by now, nearly whole again, as if it never happened.

"_Detective!_"

What does he _do_?

What does he fucking _do_?

You prick.

You _asshole_.

I stay off the job motherfucker because I'm banned because I'm _blocked _from it because I'm suspended because you wouldn't give me the clearance to go upstate and I had to go anyway and we came to this impenetrable impasse where what you wanted was one thing and what I wanted was another thing entirely another thing exactly the opposite of what you wanted and so I did what I wanted and now you have what you wanted what you've always wanted me off the job because of my dislike for authority my unconventional interrogation methods my strangeness in the face of your unaffected distant cordial normalness and so I hope you're happy now because I'm sure as fuck not because I miss the job and I miss Eames and I miss my mother and yeah I even miss you you prick because you're part of the job and I miss the job and if that means missing you then fine I'll miss you and so is that what you want to hear that I miss you that I _need _you back because I can't take care of myself anymore?

"I'm calling for an ambulance."

"I'm fine." His voice is distant. He shakes his head, passes a hand over his eyes. "I just have a bit of a headache. I'm fine."

"I'm still taking you to a hospital." Ross' eyes are wide, his face open and actually, nearly afraid. "You're…not well."

"I wouldn't want to disobey another order, but no, Captain, I'm fine. Really. I'm just…going to get going."

"To another session with Olivet, I hope."

He stops, turns. Considers.

_Grins_.

"Not right now, I'm afraid. Do you think I need to?"

Ross doesn't answer, silent and worried, and so he turns and fades back into another starless night in the city.


	2. Hallmarks

Before he goes back home he walks over to the Brooklyn Bridge. Looks out at the river. At the sky. Thinking.

All that space. That wide, open, sea space.

Thinking.

It's going to storm soon.

He goes home.

It's not until later, after he's showered and in bed reading The Phantom Tollbooth, that the thunder starts. The lightning. The fucking _wind _that blows his curtains all to hell and makes his closed bedroom door bump bump fucking bump against the woodwork.

He turns out the light on his nightstand and lays in the darkness.

_Whoooooooooooshhslpslsiwoooooooo _goes the wind.

_Bzztbzztbzztbzzt _goes his cell phone vibrating against his nightstand.

_(blank) _goes his mind.

_Dripdripspslishscrtishdripdrip_ goes the tears down his face.

He stretches his arms above his head and arches his stomach up towards the ceiling and cries, for the first time in months; cries quietly and gaspingly and not altogether uncomfortably. It feels like a forced clinical release, like an orgasm at the end of a half-hearted masturbation session, something done just for the aftermath of chemically induced calm and the blowing release of tension from the body. It feels okay, but he'd just as soon stop, if he could, but he's heard that crying is cathartic and so maybe after he finishes he'll feel better for a minute. For a second.

Anyway, he can't stop. He cries and the winds blow and the stars disappear behind clouds and the storm hits and he realizes, just as he's drifting off to sleep, that he's not feeling any better after all.

He dreams of Eames. He always dreams of Eames, it seems like. Sometimes she's not the focus but she's always there, lurking in the background, providing support and laughing and joking with him if it's a good dream; cutting him and crying and mocking him if it's not. Being tortured if it's a nightmare.

He doesn't remember the particulars of this dream when he wakes up gasping, short hours later, but he is hard and recalls vaguely sexual gray snatches of images, grainy film stillshots of her hands around his neck and her teeth in his shoulder and her thighs locked around his.

He ignores his body and gets up to face another day of whatever the hell it is that he does during his suspension.

Nothing feels right anymore. Nothing feels real. He staggers down the hallway tilting to the left, careening towards the kitchen and feeling like he's going to fall, but he can't right himself and he can't right _this _and so this is it.

This is what his life is.

Dizziness.

Unbalance.

Disconnect.

_Alone_.

Unemployed.

This wasn't supposed to happen.

***

He should be normal for a day, he decides. Normal people seem to get by okay.

Breakfast is normal.

Orange juice, coffee, fruit drizzled over cereal.

He reads the newspaper as he eats. Stretches. Lets his spoon fall into the empty bowl with a clatter.

This was all right. Kind of boring, but normal _is_ faintly boring, he supposes. Maybe boredom is really a defense mechanism, a protective layer around the heart. _That_ would be an interesting study. The relation of boredom to pain—what's the ratio? More boredom equals less pain? Can you be both bored and pained? Not at the same time, maybe. Pain tends to eradicate boredom in favor of focusing on what the hell is all this agony I'm going through? It's a distraction. Boredom is a lack of stimuli—a lack of imagination, really, a fruitless faulty expectation that external factors will provide all the entertainment necessary for a happy filled life—and that too would be interesting—can you be both happy and bored? Happy and pained? (_Happy?) _Surely not. And yet just because it's never happened to him doesn't mean it _can't _happen—no.

No.

Stop this.

Normal people don't spend time thinking these thoughts.

Normal people are busy—they have a _job _to go to, or kids to take care of, or an illness to nurse, or something to do.

And just like that, his charade falls apart. No job to go to to escape his abnormal head. No money to really do anything. No family to visit (he's _not _going to go hang out with his stoner brother). No friend he's willing to see right now (Eames makes him hurt too much).

This wasn't supposed to happen, either.

He has to get out of the apartment because he's suddenly claustrophobic. He dresses hurriedly and goes out into the open streets and he's _still _claustrophobic, because maybe he just feels trapped in his own skin, in his own personality—he _knows _he's weird, different, but he can't escape it because that's just how he is, that's how it goes, and you can't escape yourself just because you try to be normal for a brief flickering morning.

Yet another failure.

Congratulations, Detective.

Best Wishes!

Hope you feel better.

Thinking of you.

Sorry it's late.

My condolences.

And as you face this new frontier the storm will pass God is in all things serenity now when you're feeling down over the hill age is just a number you're 21! happy Father's day thank you thank you so much thank you _very _much my prayers go out to you and your family cheer up!

Cards for everything. Cards for stepfathers and 93rd birthdays and thanks for helping me move. Cards for cousins and cancer is beatable and sorry about your divorce.

Why is there no card for _this_?

What is _this_?

He should send Eames a card. An I'm so sorry for everything God I love you best partner _ever _but I just can't see you right now card (_they make those, right?_).

But then she'd call him, and she calls him enough as it is, lately, and he doesn't answer.

He walks on. Stays outside all day—such a gorgeous day. Sky blue and streaked with clouds. Wind moving enough to ease his claustrophobia, but not enough to be a distracting annoyance. Temperatures cool. It smells like impending rain. It smells like New York—grime and money and possibilities and luck and distraction.

Such a perfect day spent in such unperfect circumstances.

***

Twilight finds him outside of One Police Plaza. Like a kid banished to his room during an evening cocktail party for the adults, he stands outside and stares at it longingly. So close he could be up at his desk in five minutes—so close he could see _Eames _in five minutes, if she hasn't left for the day yet.

But five minutes pass and he's still standing outside, eyes half closed, head tilted back, feeling rain beginning to mist against his face and listening to the sounds of cars pulling out of the parking lot.

"Ross said you've gotten strange."

He opens his eyes and finds his part—he finds Eames standing before him.

"Stranger," she amends. "He said he ran into you yesterday and you just…_stared _at him for a while, lost in your head."

He keeps his eyes to the ground.

"I see what he means." Her foot swings up and connects with his thigh solidly, not enough to hurt but enough that he _feels _it. "Helloooooo in there."

"What are you doing here?" he asks finally.

"_I'm _going home for the day—what are you doing?"

"I don't know." The truth, for once. "I just sort of…ended up here. I was walking."

Eames bends her head and kicks the pavement to hide her worry (_she still worries_).

"Come on, Bobby," she says. "I'll take you home."


	3. Answers

He keeps his window down on the ride home even though out of the corner of his eye he can see Eames trying not to shiver.

"I'm sorry," he says after a while. "I—I need the air."

She glances over at him. "I don't remember windows in isolation at Tates. It was probably…stifling."

Thunder cracks above them.

"Storm's starting," he comments.

She doesn't bother to respond.

No wonder.

If he can't answer her calls he supposes it's more than fair that she won't answer his idiotic conversational gambits.

His hand is on the door handle before she even pulls in to the parking lot, and then he's murmuring his thanks and vaguely promising to call and sliding out of the car as soon as her foot touches the brake.

She turns the car off.

"Eames—I appreciate it, but—"

"I hate driving in storms," she lies, and it's such a blatant, obvious lie that he grins inwardly at her standing there and not giving a fuck that he _knows _she's lying.

He still hesitates.

"I've stayed over at your place before," she points out. "Is it a problem?"

Well, no, but he finds that when she doesspend the night he can't _stop _thinking of her, of her sitting on his couch and holding his remote and washing her hands in his sink. Of her in his bed. Of them as something more than part—currently, of them as _anything_.

"Earth, Bobby. Come back."

He finds her standing in front of him, and—_when did this happen_—her warm fingers are pressed into his palm.

"I'm here," he says at last. "No—no problem. I'll sleep on the couch."

***

So she's in his shower and now he really, _really_ can't stop thinking of her, and his body is responding (_look Eames I'm answering you now_), so he decides to go to the couch and hide under the covers and wait for morning so he can do whatever the hell it is he does during his suspension, because mostly he hasn't figured it out yet.

He pulls the blankets up to his chin and closes his eyes as he hears the shower turn off and the thunder crash and his heart beat.

He keeps his eyes closed as he hears Eames emerge from the bathroom, probably dressed in the shorts and tank top she keeps in a drawer in his vanity. _Sleeping Alex I'm sleeping please please please go to bed and sleep I can't answer any more questions_.

He senses her standing before him, staring down at him. _NononoI'masleeppleasedonotdisturbthankyou_.

She flips the blankets back and slides in beside him.

"_Eames_."

"What?" Her eyes are a glowing study of innocence. "I don't like your bed. It's not very comfortable."

"It's old." He tries to edge farther back into the couch. "You can have the couch then; I'll take the bed."

She shrugs. "You're here already. Might as well stay."

"I don't think that's a very good idea."

She tilts her head at him, a ghost of a smile on her lips. "Really? Why not?"

"Just—just _because_. Not—yeah, it's not a good idea. If you'll just let me out, then…"

Her arms go around him and she lays her head down on the pillow beside his and he can _feel _her beside him, so oh so close and so wonderful and so _Eames _and so who he'll never have in any capacity ever again now that he's probably out of a job.

"You held me the entire night after I got out of the hospital last year," she points out. "And there were other times…"

"That's different. Those were…necessary. Comfort purposes—it's been proven that hugging a loved one for at least twelve seconds decreases blood pressure and releases endorphins and—and it's just _nice _sometimes, you know, to have—to have someone hold you, but I don't need comforted and I don't think this is a good idea, really, in the slightest, so if you'll just please move…"

She snuggles up even closer. "It _is _nice," she agrees. "Return the niceness, please, loved one."

He is aching, shaking, pressed back as far into the couch as he can go and it's not far enough because she is still _right there _and oh God he didn't mean it like _that_. "Loved one—anyone you _care _about, in—in any way, you know? Not like"—he shakes his head, swallows—"not like _loved _one."

"I know." She is quiet for a minute, her arms living smoldering feeling creatures branding directly into his waist, a ring of Eames fire around his torso. "Are you claustrophobic right now, Bobby?"

"No." How could he be claustrophobic with _her _when he keeps dreaming of her in ways that are much much closer than this. "I just don't want to risk…anything. I don't want to screw this up."

"You won't screw this up," she murmurs. "You're not actively pushing me away; that's a good start towards not screwing this up."

"You don't know what will happen. So many things could go wrong, and"—he pauses, waits until his voice is steady—"I might not get back on the job, ever, and…then what?"

"You'll get back," she says fiercely. "Bobby. You _will_."

"I don't know," he whispers. "I don't think there's anything I can do—God, I'd do _anything _to get back."

He balls his hands up in her tank top, twisting the fabric in his fingers. "Eames—"

"What, Bobby?" she murmurs.

What will happen if I _don't _get back on the job and we aren't partners anymore—it'd be terrible horrible very very bad but we'd be free to…anything, not that you'd _want _to, but the option at least exists then but God I want to get back God please please God because I need the engaging and the activity and the puzzles and the time consumption and you, you you you you, I need to see you every single day and bounce ideas back and forth and have you talk to me and be able to answer and I don't know what's going to happen if I can't get back to the job because I can't imagine working anything else and I don't _want _to work anything else and I had some plans for when I retire but it's far too early I'm too young and if I don't work and I don't fill my time I'm going to go insane—I know this more than I know perhaps anything else, more than I know who my parents are and who you are and that the stars exist in the sky—

"Bobby."

"Nothing," he says at last. "I'm sorry. I'm tired."

"I bet, after walking around all day." She rests her head against his chest and he swallows, a muscle in his jaw working. "What else did you do today?"

"Ask Ross," he mutters.

"What?"

"Nothing. I didn't do anything else today. Tried to be normal for a while—that failed."

She yawns into his shirt and when she speaks she sounds sleepy. "'Course it did. You're _not _normal, Bobby."

"Thanks."

"And it's _good _that you're not normal. It's…you'd be boring if you were normal. You wouldn't be my _partner_. Our solve rate would be shot, and I'd be bored, and…" she stops and he thinks she's drifting off, but then she raises her head and looks him straight in the eyes. "I wouldn't like you quite so much if you were normal."

One lone lock of her hair escapes and falls over her face, and he clenches his hand to prevent himself from brushing it off. "You might actually call me once in a while if you were normal, though," she mutters. "And that would be nice. It'd be nice not having to force myself on you."

"It's hard," he says quietly. "I can't look at you and not think of the job. And it's just easier to shut myself off from everyone, you know? Easier to stay alone."

"But is it better?" she whispers.

He doesn't answer.

Her hand slips up under his shirt and she traces his spine slowly. At the base of his neck she drags her fingers back down and snakes them around to his stomach, brushing over his skin until she finds the throb of his heart in his chest. "What do you think, Bobby?" she murmurs. "Better or not?"

She presses her hand against his heart.

Leans forward until her lips just rub against his, a bare, delicate kiss. His hands are locked on her back, frozen, terrified to move and disturb this watery balance lest the whole act vanish.

"Still thinking of the job?" she whispers into his breath.

_Just you._

_Oh, Eames._

"Still thinking it's easier?"

Her lips press down on his, liquid but firm ground, and he's kissing her back, his hands moving down to her hips, his eyelids fluttering open and closed and his lashes brushing against hers. She's opening her mouth and exploring and so is he and thank _God _he didn't go back to his bed, because she is sighing deep in her throat, full and satisfied and longing, and it's just like his dreams only better because (unless he's suddenly gone insane and imagining this) he's not going to wake up to nothing but barren cool space around his body.

Just _Eames._

His nerves have gone haywire; everywhere she touches him sparking and spiking and pulsing until he is electric; long dead batteries charging up, trains grinding into action, remote control airplanes swooping into the sky.

City lights under a blanket of clouds.

He feels this desperate urge to talk, suddenly, to talk to _her_, to spill his guts, but he doesn't want to pull away and risk losing this so he mutters something into her mouth and rolls over so he's on top of her and his hands are sliding up and she has a leg wrapped around him and _oh God—_he's trying to keep his weight off of her because she's still a little uneasy about being so trapped, but he wants her so _fucking much _that he's aching into her and she is absolving his pain, taking it and replacing it with _her_.

He's sliding her shorts down, moaning and cupping and touching and primed to go, when she gasps against his lips. Pushes him off. Slides off the couch.

Shoves the sun back behind the clouds.

Gives him right back his pain.

_Shit._

_I'm sorry _is on the tip of his tongue, fully formed, but he can't say it and so he swallows it, picturing the words banging around down his esophagus and settling in a pool of stomach acid.

"I didn't mean for this to happen—I didn't think it would go this far." She is shaking, her fingers trembling as she adjusts her clothing. "I just—had a point to make; just wanted to show you that this is still real and then"—she touches her lips—"it just felt so—_so_—"

God only knows what he'll dream tonight.

Eames talks to him some more, but she's careful to keep her distance and he doesn't hear the words assaulting his ears.

"I'm sorry," he says every so often, apologizing and apologizing but it doesn't make any difference because it's done and over with.

"It's not your fault, Bobby," she keeps saying, shaking her head, holding her hands out to him. "I was…participating too. But I think it's best if we just let it go at that…you know? We're _partners_."

_Partners._

Not right now, Eames.

"I'm going to go home," she says softly. "I'll…call you, okay? And you'll answer?"

Right.

She leaves.


	4. Unfortunate Metaphors

_That should not have happened_.

Alex turns out the lights and crawls into bed.

Thinking.

_That should not have happened_.

_He looked so…_

_Deadened._

She listens to the rain beat against her windows.

Thinking.

_So…_

_Alone._

She expects she'll lie awake for hours, her mind torturing her with the memories, the sensations, but she goes right to sleep, the sleep of the dead, deep consumptive sleep that makes her feel like she's drowning when she wakes up at four-thirty in the morning so thirsty she can feel her throat muscles tense.

_Water._

She slides out of bed. Doesn't realize how dizzy she is until she staggers over into the wall, and it's dark, and she can't see anything, but she doesn't care because she's going to get to the fucking kitchen for a glass of water if it kills her.

_Water._

She crashes into the wall, keeps going.

_Water._

_Water water waterwaterwaterwater._

The light from the fridge is blinding. She squints in the darkness, sees red molten orange circles floating in her vision. Doesn't care.

_Water._

She holds her one hand up to shield her eyes and with the other grabs the pitcher of water (_thank God_) out of the fridge and _chugs _it, not bothering to stop for a glass.

She drinks until the pitcher is empty and her throat is numb with cold, and then she wobbles back to bed, her stomach gushing and lurching along with her.

_Maybe too much water._

Her bed is still warm with her body heat. She sinks down into the nest she's left behind and nearly moans at the sensation. Like sinking into a warm bath. Like sinking into her partner's arms (_no, no—stop that_).

She rolls over on to her side. Closes her eyes.

And doubles over from the cramps.

_Way too fucking much water._

She lays in bed for a minute, moaning at the pain shooting through her stomach, before she gets back up into the cold night air and goes into her bathroom. She bends over the sink. Clutches it. Feels her stomach gurgling and sliding around inside of her—it feels like morning sickness all over again, with a translucent water baby.

She feels better and worse when she's vomiting—good and bad rolled into one, pain and relieved release. Just like nearly fucking her part—no, Alex, you can't compare vomiting to what you and Bobby just nearly did—God, think how provoked Bobby would be if he knew the metaphors running through her head.

Although in earlier years he might have thought it was funny.

Guess not now.

Anyway.

She throws up until all the water is out of her stomach and her throat aches, and then she trudges down the hallway back to bed again.

Her bed is cold, barren. Unfamiliar.

Just like the look on Bobby's face when she rolled away.

_Stop this._

Half awake, half asleep. Her window closed above her bed, the rain beating but being unable to breach glass and screen.

In the midst of the storm and yet protected from it.


	5. Water Under The Bridge

It rains the next four days. Hard, grinding rain, rain that comes so hard so fast it _hurts _when he dares to venture outside, because each drop feels like bullets.

He doesn't mind. He likes the darkness during the day. He likes the worried anchors on the local news waving their sticks in the air and talking about condensation patterns. He likes the scroll of flood warnings against the top of the screen.

He likes that it blows his cell phone signal all to hell so he has a legitimate excuse for not answering the dozens and dozens of calls he's getting from the same ignored number.

He likes the steady throbbing beat against his window that matches the drumming in his head.

He likes that the wind feels like an ache.

He especially likes that the rain is making the Hudson River rise under the Brooklyn Bridge.

He's finished all his books now. Finished Little House on the Prairie and Matilda and The View From Saturday. Caught up on his childhood.

The stack of completed books by his bed is like an ending. Proof that he read this and this and this. Proof that he did something.

There's proof that he's done other things, too. Letters of commendation for bravery in his Army file. Official warnings in his detective jacket. The highest solve rate in the department for the past eighty-four months.

The brand Eames will carry for the rest of her life.

Isn't that enough?

He's made his mark on the world. He's tried to make it a better place.

But he's over his pinnacle. On a slow decline now.

Better a flame extinguished prematurely then a long drawn out mess of ash and hopeless sparks smoldering in a starless black hole.

***

The fifth day.

Cloudy but dry.

On the fifth day the animals in the sea were created.

On the fifth day he gets out of bed for the first time in thirty-three hours. Dresses in his favorite corduroy shirt and jeans.

I bet Eames is wearing jeans today.

I bet Eames will call today.

I bet I won't answer.

I bet I'll never be allowed to touch Eames' jeans.

Her legs.

Those legs, moving smoothly away from him.

Heading for the door.

It's time for a walk.

***

He stands in the parking lot of 1PP for a while. Staring at Eames' car.

She sits there (she sat on my couch).

Her hands grasp the wheel (her hands grasped other things).

She opens the door (she opened my shirt).

She gets out (she walked away).

He turns away.

It's time.

***

The water is deafening. He never before noticed how _loud _water can be. How _consuming_.

Earth, air, fire.

Water.

Sky, planets, clouds.

Stars.

He might be starless, but he can have water.

At Tates he _craved_ water.

So now, too.

Only now he can have his _fill _of water. He can be _taken _by the water.

Consumed.

If he lets it.

He stands just off the highway, in the grass. Puddles slog up around his shoes and make the bottom of his jeans wet.

Water encroaching, coming in. Insidious. Creeping.

Beginning to overtake him.

So easy.

It's so easy to _fall_.

_Splash!_

Simple as that.

Simple.

Why can't anything be simple?

He edges closer to the bridge.

***

Minutes later, still standing. Studying the bridge. Metal interwoven. Structure bursting into existence.

Cars zooming by.

Mist hanging in the air.

Water, calling.

***

He touches the bridge. Feels the rough bumps of rust beginning.

He felt _Eames _five days ago.

He felt the stars.

He felt _alive_.

Five days ago.

Five days after and he's standing on the Brooklyn Bridge.

***

He bounces up and down on his heels. It's like doing the elliptical at the gym. Toes down, heels up. Body in synch. Mind numbed by sweat and music and pointless gym tv; with bad choices and former jobs and partners and forbidden things.

On the elliptical, you go faster if you lean forward.

Same with death.

***

He edges forward.

No one cares.

No one stops.

No one gasps.

Death waiting and it's like a blank page in a notebook, a sight familiar and ordinary to the general public.

Not to him.

Notebooks might be blank, but they're full of possibilities.

He filled up nearly half of his notebook in the last few weeks. Mostly things about Eames. His job. His family. His complete fucking inability to get anything _right _this time around. Letters he'll never send. Lists he'll never read. Pictures clipped onto pages he'll never see again.

He supposes Eames will find it now.

***

One foot on, one foot off.

It is the foot that is off that is more interesting, he thinks. He thinks: _ooh, I like that. Have to remember that for my book_.

He was going to be a writer after being forced into retirement. Going to buy a house in a quiet peaceful village and spend his days immersed in words.

But he doesn't have to remember it anymore.

He figured he'd die in words.

But there are no words for this.

***

The water's going to cut he knows it he knows it more than he knows anything else and it's going to hurt probably going to hurt quite a lot but so does this and so what's the difference between this pain and _this_ pain when they're both just pain pain pain pain pain and more pain and Eames sounded so fucking pained when she said she should go but sometimes pain feels good (not Eames pain) because sometimes pain is the only signifier of life so he supposes it's only fitting that pain can signify death equally as well to balance out the spectrum and they had complimentary skills to balance each other out but the only things he's balancing out now right now are his toes on the end and the statistic that every eight seconds someone is born and every twelve seconds someone dies.

***

Jump.

Jump jump jump. Jumpjumpjumpjumpcan'tfuckingcan'tfuckingdoitdoitjumpjumpjumpjumpohGodohpleaseohEamesohnoohohohohsimplesimplesimple_splash_jumpjumpjumpletgoletgoletgoandjust_jump_.

***

He jumps.

Jumps off.

Floating away.

Sky sea stars heaven this is hell this is hell is there a hell _this_ is hell.

***

It hurts like hell when his feet connect with the highway. Heels smashing into pavement. Bones grinding. Cartilage crunching.

That's what you get when you jump backwards off a bridge down to the highway.

He's frozen in this ridiculous stork pose, arms akimbo, one knee bent and his other collapsed against the bridge he's leaning back against.

His back is really fucked up, he notices. Spirals of pain shooting up and down his spine.

Better than the alternative.

His breath is coming too much too fast until he knows he's going to hyperventilate if he doesn't get it under control, and if you hyperventilate too much your brain shuts down against the overflow of oxygen coming in, and you pass out.

He doesn't want to pass out.

It would be too much like the alternative: the quiet, the dark, the slow tender absolution of death, the peaceful hallowed slipping—_no_, he's chosen _life_.

(this time)

His breath slows down.

Life speeds up again.

He is _here _and he is breath and he is pain but he is not death.

On the elliptical you also go faster when you lean back.

***

He limps home with a strange emotionless determination.

He has a life.

He _will _get his job back.

He _will _try to make things right.

He _will _be alive once more.

***

He wakes up the next day to a dry, gray sky. Only 10% chance of showers.

He can handle ten percent.

The news anchors are nearly giddy with excitement as they talk about the historic flooding levels reached over the last week. It's easy to be giddy when the storm's over, he thinks, heading out to buy more books.

He stops by the bridge.

Takes one more look.

Continues on.

Water, receding.

**A/N. So this was one of those things where I realized, ooh, the whole rain/storm=his suicidal impulses is pretty hackneyed and, you know, **_**bad**_** on the literary-value scale, but I liked it (and had so much fun writing it), so I kept it in. Sorry about that. Really. **


	6. Epilogue

_Epilogue_

The memory of the bridge stays imprinted on his mind for days and days and days.

Sometimes...things just get to be too much. Events upon events piling up until you look around and realize, hell, everything around me has collapsed...what's to stop me from joining the rubble? It doesn't have to be planned. It doesn't have to be logical. It just has to...be. It is what it is. And if it stops, then it stops. And if it doesn't...

But it stopped.

Five days after he nearly closed his own final case, Ross calls.

There's a case, Detective.

An…opportunity.

If you're up to it.

Some undercover work.

The chief's hoping I'll get myself _killed._

That thought has crossed my mind.

But I'll get my badge back.

You will.

He thinks about his badge.

He thinks about his bridge.

He thinks about Eames.

He thinks about life.

He thinks he'll do it.

***

He spends his days in strip clubs and back rooms and tinted cars.

Not by choice.

Just for the badge.

He doesn't tell Eames what he's doing.

Not by choice.

And yes, by choice.

He is forbidden to tell her, but when has that ever stopped him before?

No, it's his mind that's stopping him now.

His mind stops a lot of things, lately.

***

He's doing this to get back to his partner, he tells himself. His partner, and his badge.

And his life.

If any of them will have him back.

Weeks ago, he toppled back off the bridge and landed in the highway and staggered off to his apartment. Took a shower. Slept _like _the dead for eighteen hours.

Like the dead and yet not.

So close.

How close?

_This_close.

How close is he to Eames?

So close.

_This_close?

After he gets his badge back and he can talk to her again, maybe.

***

How close are we to the sky?

To the stars?

_This_close.

Is there a heaven?

There is hell.

There is life.

And there are stars.

_~~Complete~~_


End file.
